Coca-Cola is reducing the sugar in even its full-sugar drinks

The Coca-Cola Company's local bottler is changing the recipes of some of its biggest-selling soft drinks to make them lower in sugar, amid a consumer backlash against sugar consumption and growing calls for a sugar tax.

More than 30 countries including the United Kingdom, Ireland and Mexico will have sugar taxes in place by the end of this year to help tackle the obesity crisis, and health groups say Australia - one of the fattest nations on earth - should follow suit.

Coca-Cola Amatil managing director Alison Watkins said on Wednesday that while she did not believe sugar taxes improved public health, the company was nonetheless trying to cut the sugar levels in the products it sold in Australia and New Zealand by 10 per cent by 2020.

Coca-Cola Amatil says it has reformulated 22 products since 2015.Credit:Bloomberg

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Ms Watkins said it was doing this by introducing low- or no-sugar varieties of its major soft-drink brands, such as Coca-Cola No Sugar, but also by changing the formulas of the "original" products without rebranding them.

“We’re doing it either just by making things less sweet over time, gradually, or by using stevia, which is a naturally derived sweetener, to replace some of the sugar," Ms Watkins said following the company's annual general meeting.

“We see a lot more opportunities to come.”

Over the past two years CCA - an ASX-listed company that is 30 per cent owned by the Coca-Cola Company and bottles and sells its products in Australia and nearby markets - has cut the sugar on 22 products sold in Australia since 2015.

In the past two years it had lowered the amount of sugar in Lift by 23 per cent (from about 10 teaspoons of sugar in each can to eight), Sprite by 26 per cent, "Blue" Powerade by 20 per cent and Deep Spring by 26 per cent, Ms Watkins said.

The company was working towards on a lower-sugar formula for Fanta, she said.

But Ms Watkins said CCA was changing its products to help fight obesity and meet consumer demand for lower-sugar products, rather than to prepare for an impending tax.

"Obviously taking these actions, if we do end up in a scenario of a sugar tax we’ll be in a better place anyway, but that’s not what’s driving us at the moment," she said.

Jane Martin, executive manager of the Obesity Policy Coalition, said the sugar reductions CCA was making was a positive step, but needed to be extended to its highest-selling product, full-sugar Coca-Cola, to have a significant impact.

“They’re responding to consumers, because Australians are concerned about sugar and people are shifting away from full sugar drinks because of that,” Ms Martin said.

Global food giant Nestle this week said it would try to lower the amount of sugar across its product by 5 per cent, on top of a 34 per cent reduction achieved since 2000.

Neither major political party in Australia has backed a sugar tax, with the Turnbull government saying there was "zero change" of it bringing in such a measure.

Ms Watkins said on Wednesday that price rises as a result of the new container deposit scheme implemented NSW, which sees a 10¢ refund paid for recycling plastic bottles and cans, had a negative impact on sales, particualrly large multi-packs.

However consumers were expected to get over the "sticker shock" quickly, she said.